Paulina is of Polish descent, which is her first language. Her English is quite poor, prompting a 13-year-old Stephen to take an online course in an effort to communicate with her. She cleans the Dene house twice a week. Stephen notes that her job is not to drive all the way to the outskirts of Cheltenham in order to collect her employers' boy whom they had forgotten about and left at school.

After Stephen is left at school by his parents (who had forgotten to pick him up), Paulina sets out to pick him up and bring him home. She greeted him with a sympathetic manner and a Twix bar, and Stephen attempts to converse with her in Polish though soon drifts off into silence when he feels that he is slaughtering the language with his dull-edged tongue.